Automatically his hand reached out for the transmission switch: he keyed it to the ground station and croaked: "Orbiter calling, personal communication, please respond."
The station was on its toes—or on whatever passed for toes in a T'Worlie. The creature who responded almost instantly stared out at Ben Line Pertin and said through its Pmal translator, "Greeting, Ben Line. I have joy that you are well again."
"Thanks, Nlem," Pertin said. "I want to—"
"It is now Nloom," the T'Worlie said. "Nlem is the version still aboard the orbiter with you. Nleem is the other version transported here."
"Nloom, then, dammit! Please. I have to get a message through right away."
"For whom is your message?"
"For my w—" Ben Line stopped and swallowed. "For Mrs. Zara Doy Gentry," he croaked. "May I please speak to her at once?"
The T'Worlie, who had known Ben Line well enough in their time together on the orbiter, stared at him thoughtfully out of its five eyes. Finally the Pmal chirped, "It was my conjecture you would have a message for her."
"Sure I would. Can I speak to her?"
"Negative. She has left with a survey expedition. Their circuits are fully occupied with telemetry and necessary administrative communications at this time. There will however be a direct channel opening in"— the T'Worlie spun in the air to look at something out of Ben Line's field of view, then spun back to look at him—"in about two and one-half hours. I can then relay a message if you wish."
"I'd rather talk to her direct, Nloom," Pertin pleaded. "Can you patch through then?"
"Affirmative," the T'Worlie chirped, "although that is of course contingent on Zara Doy Gentry's desire to use available time for that purpose." Nloom hung there silently for a moment, and added: "Friend Ben Line, it is a different version here. She does not know you, I think. What shall I tell her of your desire to speak with her?"
Ben Line hesitated.
Of course the TWorlie was right. This Zara had come direct from Earth. If she had heard of his existence at all, it was only casually—someone her Sun One duplicate had met there and married. She did not know him; worse, she herself was married to another man.
What could he say to her?
To that question he had no answer at all.
"I don't know, Nloom," he said dismally. "I guess—I think you'd better forget I called. I have to think this over."
He flipped the switch that dissolved the compassionate stare of the T'Worlie into a silvery mist as the stereostage went blank. He sat there, staring into the empty tank of the stage, seeing nothing, feeling nothing but a wretched, suffocating, overwhelming ache of loss.
TEN
That other Ben Pertin, who distinguished himself with the middle name "Yale," sat, filthy, bruised, and exhausted, ravenously tearing with his teeth at the flesh of a kind of watersnake, watching the skinny boy croon at the monster called an org.
He was delighted that the other human—or near- human, the one called Redlaw—had found his equipment and brought it to him. But it was badly damaged. He had managed to repair the Pmal translator enough to get across a few words to the man and the boy; but it was not functioning well. All he had been able to understand was that they wanted to use him to fight some enemies—no doubt the ones they called "Watchers." Why, he did not know. He also did not know if he had any freedom of choice about fighting. Was he an ally or a draftee?
But at least he was alive, and he had not expected that much when the boy caught him trying to break open the egg. The first thing Ben Yale tried to get across through his Pmal translator was an apology for that. He hadn't known it was a pet. He had only been hungry. Whether the boy had understood or not, he could not tell. That lean, sharp Indian face was hard to read. The boy's words through the spottily functioning Pmal had hardly been reassuring: "Mine ... not kill . . . punish!"
Now the org was perched on a rock, swaying uncertainly as it regarded the watersnake in Ben Yale's hands. Pertin half-turned, watching the creature over his shoulder. It was still learning to keep its balance. Wings not yet unfolded, it looked ridiculous, like a trunk-faced, big-eyed fish with bird legs.
The exploring trunk reached out toward him, and Ben Yale swore under his breath, tore off a shred of the watersnake and threw it to the org. The boy cried something, which the Pmal clucked over without producing a single intelligible word. From the curtain of spray that concealed lie cave, the man named Redlaw said: "He says: 'Meat not spoiled? Not make org sick?'"
Ben Yale shook his head. "It doesn't taste very good, but it doesn't seem to be harming me any," he said. The giant muttered something to the boy, who stared appraisingly at Pertin then, reluctantly, bobbed his head.
"Can give more," the giant said generously through the Pmal.
"I think I'd rather have a drink," said Pertin, not caring whether the translator dealt with it or not. He pushed past the giant, under the shrouding waterfall and out toward the lake.
The boy followed him, carefully scanning the sky. Pertin was not flattered. He knew the boy's concern was not for his own safety, but for fear he might attract the attention of some predator or enemy to the rest of them. Particularly to the org.
Pertin knelt on the gravel beach and leaned forward on his spread hands to drink. The water was cold and good, but it gave him little pleasure.
His position, when he thought it over carefully, was not very happy. The giant, Redlaw, seemed to want to talk only about weapons, and he had none; they had not been in the junk the giant had carried from the wreckage of his ship. To the younger man, Org Rider, he appeared to be only an inconvenience, possibly useful to taste doubtful meat for the org but otherwise a net liability. Neither of them seemed in the least interested in Pertin's reason for being on their world. What he had tried to tell them of the great universe outside had been received by the giant without comment, and by Org Rider, apparently, without understanding; the Pmal translator, in its damaged condition, seemed to function sporadically with Redlaw and almost not at all with the boy.
Ben Yale Pertin stood up and looked around him. He did not even notice the beauty of the scene: the deep, rock-walled valley in which he stood, the lazy waterfall behind him, the cold little lake with water so deep it looked black, the strange, colorful vegetation. Back on the orbiter the prospect of exploring these jungles had seemed interesting, to the extent that anything could interest him more than his own misery and loss without his wife and future. Back on Sun One, when he and Zara had been together, it would have seemed enchanting, a marvelous holiday surrounded by beauty. And farther back still, on Earth, before he had ever submitted to tachyon transmission, when there was still only one of him and that one knew nothing but cities and crowding, this whole scene would have seemed a total fantasy.
Now his eyes did not even register its color or its strangeness. It meant no more to him than a cell.
By the side of the lake Redlaw and the boy were building a fire, roasting nuts they had gathered, muttering to each other, too far away for the Pmal to pick up what they were saying and try to render it into English.
The giant stood up and walked easily toward Pertin. His green eyes were cold and judging. He put his fists on his hips as he stood before Pertin, towering over him nearly two feet, and spoke in his liquid tongue, rapidly and at length.
The Pmal, stammering to keep up, produced bursts of words: "Orgs gone. Watchers gone. Safe to travel. Can now find other slamming machine, other man like you. Can find killing things!"
Ben Yale Pertin kicked a pebble aimlessly into the water. "Travel?" he repeated. "You want me to come with you somewhere, to find another ship with weapons?"